an. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not
buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because I
did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great
invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents
represented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which
I might reserve for other occasions.

But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all
these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of
exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring
all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless
dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at
once reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for not
taking over bodily their whole stock in trade.

For example, you have a desire for culture. You haven't the means to
indulge in very much, but you would like a little. You are immediately
beset by all the eager Matthew Arnolds who have heard of your desire,
and they insist that you should at once devote yourself to the knowledge
of the best that has been known and said in the world. All this is very
fine, but you don't see how you can afford it. Isn't there a little of a
cheaper quality that they could show you? Perhaps the second best would
serve your purpose. At once you are covered with reproaches for your
philistinism.

You had been living a rather prosaic life and would like to brighten it
up with a little poetry. What you would really like would be a modest
James Whitcomb Riley's worth of poetry. But the moment you express the
desire the University Extension lecturer insists that what you should
take is a course of lectures on Dante. No wonder that you conclude that
a person in your circumstances will have to go without any poetry at
all.

It is the same way with efforts at social righteousness. You find it
difficult to engage in one transaction without being involved in others
that you are not ready for. You are interested in a social reform that
involves collective action. At once you are told that it is socialistic.
You do not feel that it is any worse for that, and you are quite willing
to go on. But at once your socialistic friends present you with the
whole programme of their party. It is all or nothing. When it is
presented in that way you are likely to become discouraged and fall back
on nothing.

Now, if we had a circulating medium you wou